The Fallen and the Damned
by EmRose92
Summary: John is a Guardian Angel of Heaven. Sherlock is one of Hell's Angels bored of hell, tired of tempting, and looking for stimulation on earth. John is sent to earth to convince Sherlock that mortality is no place for the immortal and soon realizes that souls are not as black and white as he thought. When Heaven and Hell come to reclaim their own, he must choose a side. On hiatus.
1. Chapter 1

I've been intrigued with Winglock for a long time, and this is my attempt at writing my own. This is different than anything I've ever written, mostly because it deals a lot with some spiritual stuff that I hope isn't offensive in any way. Please let me know if it is. It's not mean to be an accurate portrayal of any religion, so I hope any inaccuracies are forgiven as part of a story and not a religious commentary.

Other than that, I hope you enjoy! This is a short beginning chapter - more of a prologue, really, and the chapters will get longer as we go. Let me know what you think. Reviews keep me going, and without them I lose motivation to post. That's not a threat, just a statement. Promise.

Emrose

* * *

When Abner Millet died, John lifted his soul and carried it gently to heaven.

The old man had been a good sort, a kind man with good family values and a Christian heart. He had been a quiet man, not prone to taking risks or pulling dangerous stunts, and John had had little to do in the last eighty years. The occasional wandering spirit had come around, looking for a body inside which to hitch a ride to the pearly gates, but John had warded them off easily. One look at his brilliant dark-gold wings, flared to their full sixteen foot spread and soaring far above John's head, sweeping in elegant lines of full, shimmering light and glory was enough to set them cowering; the sight of the Flaming Sword held almost casually in one hand and the warning gleam in his ice-bright blue eyes was sufficient to send them scurrying for cover. Devils, on the other hand, posed a bigger challenge—they often carried shadow imitations of Flaming Swords and had power of their own. And then there was the one Commandment that John hated but adhered to despite himself: no interfering with Temptation. According to the Plan of Moral Agency implemented at the Creation, mortals were on their own as far as that went.

Abner Millet had been especially good at ignoring Devils, for which John was grateful. He'd had countless charges in the time since the world began, and many of them had been distinctly less able to ignore their charms than Abner had been. He'd spent far too many hours (in human time, that is) doing his best to coach his humans back to path of Good and away from the snickering, capering Devils luring them down the gentle path to Hell's Gates.

Not all demons snickered and capered, of course, but those were the most common type. They were easy to intimidate, although some of them were stupid enough not to know when they were outmatched. Those were the ones into which John enjoyed putting the fear of God.

Hell's Angels, now, those were the demons a little trickier to deal with. They were clever, bitter, and dangerous, and though John had never met one he had been unable to best he was always a little apprehensive that one day he wouldn't be good enough. He was, after all, only a Guardian Angel, and while that was millennia older than Cherubim and older still than Heralds, he was still sort of a middle child, being millennia younger than both the Seraphim and the Archangels (not to be confused with Prince Michael t_he_ Archangel, who was older than them all).

But Abner Millet was now safely delivered to Heaven's Gates, and John was summoned to the Courts Above to receive his new assignment.

When he took the embossed card from the Herald, all it had were two words printed on the front side. Confused, he read them twice and then flipped the card over, looking for the rest of the standard information about wheres, whens, warnings, etc. The back of the card said simply,

_See Thaladiel at your earliest convenience._

"Thaladiel? As in…" John looked up at the Herald, who nodded.

"All the way up…the Seraphim himself. Special case. He wanted to instruct you personally."

"Right." John flipped the card over again and read the name on the front again. "What is so special about _this_ soul that I need to see Thaladiel?"

"I suppose you're about to find out," the Herald said, and if there was a touch of exasperation in his voice John chose to ignore it. Even messenger angels had long days, after all.

"Thanks," John said, and tucked the card away. Anticipation (but not nervousness, because angels didn't really feel nervous) fluttered in his chest for just a moment, and then off he went to find Thaladiel (whose title was Protectorate of the Guardians, a rather pompous title meaning that he oversaw everything potentially dangerous or odd about new human souls and intervened if anything too strange or potentially disastrous down on earth started happening. He had pulled aside Guardians of human souls the likes of Hitler and Stalin for private chats, and remembering that made John nervous. He wasn't sure he wanted to be Guardian to the next would-be dictator of the earth).

When John arrived at his meeting with Thaladiel, he pulled the card out again and read the name one last time. It was an odd one for this day and age, and he had a suspicious feeling that he was holding the name of someone very special indeed. Not that that came as a surprise, because here was about to sit down with Thaladiel himself, and that alone meant that this particular human soul was destined for greatness. And whether that greatness was terrible or not, John was anxious to find out.

As he was called through to Thaladiel's office, he glanced down at the card one last time and whispered softly,

"Sherlock Holmes. What in the name of Heaven is so special about you?"

* * *

Yes? No? Maybe?


	2. Chapter 2

****Chapter Two pretty quickly...I leave out of town for a week or so and wanted to get this posted before I left. Thank you so much for all who have already reviewed. Honestly, you are the reason this is up right now. I tried to get some things cleared up in this chapter, and I also went back and edited a few things in the last chapter. I confused myself with the classes and titles and species of angels and demons and so I made more clear to myself and hopefully for you. If you're confused, at the end of this chapter is a brief rundown since I was kind of muddled in the first chapter.

Anyways.

Continue to review, and I will continue to love writing this!

Emrose

* * *

**Two**

"Sit down, John."

John sat. Thaladiel, Guardian Protectorate and Seraphim of Heavenly Hosts, leaned forward across his shimmering golden desk and fixed steely eyes on John's face. John swallowed. He had had private audiences with Seraphim before, but never one quite so intimidating as the angel sitting across from him. Thaladiel's great slate-gray wings arched up and over his head at sharper angles and with more power and heft to them than John's; he found himself instinctively shuttering his own a little closer to his body.

"You have been Chosen," Thaladiel said, and John swore he could hear the capital letter in front of the word, "and I have deemed you fit for the duty to which I have called you."

"Oh, yes, good," John said awkwardly. There was a pause, in which Thaladiel continued to stare at him and John's insides squirmed uncomfortably.

"Sherlock Holmes," Thaladiel intoned next. "The name will mean nothing to you."

"I'm afraid not."

"That is the name he has chosen for himself. His true name is less…mortal."

"He's…hang on, he's an Immortal? Then why…I'm to be his Guardian?"  
"No."

"Okay…" John was feeling distinctly confused—not a pleasant feeling for an angel. Maybe Thaladiel didn't realize that he wasn't a Seraphim. Weren't they supposed to be the warriors, run after errant Immortals, do battle?

Thaladiel sighed, and John decided to assume that the angel knew what he was doing until he proved otherwise. "The Immortal in question has fled the Realms Below and somehow forced his way into mortality, where he has taken up residence on the European continent. We have been watching him, ready to move at the first sign of trouble, but he has led a relatively quiet existence for several earth years. He keeps to himself, hardly interacts with other mortals, never communicates with Below. For all intents and purposes, he is living a perfectly normal human existence."

John was on his way to understanding, or at least he thought he was. "And you want me to keep an eye on him? I'm to be his what, his jailer?" _Babysitter? Nanny? Dear Heavens._

"Not quite." Thaladiel smiled grimly. "You are to convince him that mortality is no place for the Immortal. He must return to the Below. Sooner or later he is going to cause waves. Sooner or later he is going to be missed. Sooner or later he is going to slip up and reveal his true nature. Mortality is not ready for its spiritual eyes to be opened in such a violent way as a tug-of-war between Below and one of its runaways. Earth is no place for an angel of Hell, and this Sherlock-Holmes-the-mortal-human-being façade needs to end."

"Hang on…he's an Angel? He's not a Devil."

"You are up to the task, I have no doubt." Thaladiel looked at John in what he evidently thought was a fatherly sort of way, but only looked rather menacing. John didn't like being menaced. Something inside him grew hard, and he sat up straighter.

"Of course. And I'm to do this how?"

"You'll become human, of course, as he has done."

"I'll become human."

"It is, I am afraid, the only way to do it without drawing unwanted attention. Forcing him back Below will only make trouble for you and the rest of the Host."

"Right. Wouldn't want to start Armageddon early." He meant it as a joke, but Thaladiel looked grim.

"Quite right. Which is why you must convince him that he must return to where he belongs. He is making the Guardians of the inhabitants of…" he paused, consulted a single sheet of paper resting neatly in front of him, "Baker Street, London, England, highly nervous. Everyone has noticed he has no Guardian of his own, and while we've tried to keep it quiet, rumors are spreading and tension is increasing dramatically."

"They don't know he's an Angel?"

"They suspect, but we have not confirmed. He is rather talented, quite powerful—he has managed to keep his identity hidden."

John shook his head. This whole thing was starting to seem ludicrous. A powerful Hell's Angel, living as a mortal somewhere in London, so powerful that he was shielding his true identity from Guardian Angels wherever he went, and now he was drawing attention from both the Courts Above and most likely from the Realms Below, and if John didn't convince him to abandon earth and move back there'd likely be a war over this single wayward demon.

"And we can't just leave him alone? What if he never does anything? What if he really just wants to pretend to be human?"

"He belongs to the Realms Below," Thaladiel said. "Do you really think one of Hell's powerful Angels would truly be content to live in mortality forever? They were cast out, they were disgraced, they were removed…their greatest pleasure is in others' pain. This one must have ulterior motives. And whatever they are, they spell nothing good for either humanity or Above."

"And you're sure I'm the one for the job?" Because right now John was feeling less than confident.

"Quite sure," Thaladiel said, and when he smiled this time it was genuine and warm. "We have complete faith in you. You are more powerful than you think, John. You are clever and resourceful, quite diplomatic, and you have the patience of Job himself. Do not think for a moment that I would send you if I did not have confidence in your abilities."

John smiled back, grateful but slightly bolstered with the compliments. Thaladiel looked back down at the sheet of paper and then back at John.

"Questions?"

"When do I start?"

* * *

Mycroft Holmes was unusually used to dealing with spiritual entities. He had been approached by several in his lifetime, mostly those of the more unpleasant sort but once or twice by ones from the other place (Mycroft wasn't particularly religious and didn't like to think in terms of heavens and hells, angels and demons; he liked to lump them all together as beings from Other Worlds and ignore the finer distinctions). He was an observant man—considered by most to be the most observant man in England, if not the entire European continent. He had climbed his way to the top of the British Government by the time he was 36, and on this particular evening he was cursing his own ambition. If he'd been content with a lesser position, the immortal population of both heaven and hell might have chosen to ignore him.

"What is it now, Sherlock?"

The tall, thin, pale man in front of him only looked at him for a long moment, hands tucked neatly in the pockets of his Belstaff, collar still turned up from the wind picking up outside the window behind Mycroft's desk. Then he took a deep, lazy breath and said, "I'm bored."

Mycroft felt his body go very still even as his mind began to offer him solutions to this potentially disastrous problem.

"No case from Detective Inspector Lestrade this week, I take it."

"Several, in fact," Sherlock said. "But nothing worth my time."

"How…irritating," Mycroft said, and stood slowly, turning away from Sherlock to stare out the window, where it was threatening rain. "And you want me to come up with a solution?"

"If it's not too much trouble." Sherlock sounded amused, casual, but the hairs on the back of Mycroft's neck stood up all the same.

"Not at all," he said carefully. "I will contact you tomorrow with something that might interest you."

"See that you do," Sherlock said, and smiled a smile that curved his lips up but kept his strange metallic eyes hooded and impassive. Mycroft returned the smile, and Sherlock was gone, closing the door quietly behind him.

Mycroft collapsed back in his chair behind his desk and laced his fingers in front of him, staring at nothing. However many favors this demon had done, helping him claw his way to power, teaching him subtle ways to hone his observational skills, quietly disposing of threatening terrorists, unweaving complicated foreign political webs, offering vital pieces of information about inside threats or even the occasional interesting bit of useless gossip, he still had days where he wondered if he'd made the biggest mistake of his career in entangling his life with that of one of Hell's Angels. Allowing it to masquerade as his little brother, recently returned from abroad where he had been in intensive drug rehabilitation programs and now living in London and working with the Yard as a consulting detective had seemed a small price to pay for the power the demon had offered him.

And now the demon was bored, and Mycroft closed his eyes and felt the weight of the world, or at least London, on his shoulders. A bored demon was no good at all, especially not one with the kind of power Sherlock had, with the kind of information he knew.

His phone vibrated gently against his desktop, and he reached over and keyed the message open.

_Moving,_ it said. _Been evicted. Need funds, send money immediately. SH._

"Again?" Mycroft muttered aloud.

_Evicted again, Sherlock? And what of your flatmate?_

_ Left last week. Lasted eleven days. Bored of him anyway._

_ Eleven? A possible new record._

_ Still bored. _

_ I will have something tomorrow, as I promised._

_ You're too kind. Looking for new accommodations, central London preferred. More exciting._

_ If you keep driving your flatmates away there is only so much I can do._

_That, dear brother, is the least of your worries. SH._

And with that, Mycroft knew the conversation was over.

There was one thing to be grateful for, he reflected. Dealing with a bored demon looking for excitement and representing the potential energy of Hell itself unleashed on London if he didn't find it made problems of State seem rather dull and unimportant.

Mycroft sighed, picked up the phone again, and began to look for a way out.

* * *

It felt as if he had fallen from Heaven, tumbling and whirling in a storm of color and light and sound, and when he woke from the darkness John the Angel was John Watson the human. He felt bare and exposed, completely cut off from the only existence he'd ever known. The weight of mortality, of earth, of being earthbound without use of his wings, without his Flaming Sword, was weighty and lonely. He felt the eyes of the masses on him—he wasn't used to being bumped on the underground or acknowledged by cars as he crossed the street or smiled or glowered at by passersby. He held his breath when demons passed a little too close to him and paused, looked at him curiously, sniffing the air as if they could smell his immortality before deciding he was only human and passing on. It was strange, pretending as if he couldn't see them. He had to avoid making eye contact with the Guardian Angels too; it would look suspicious to be waving or nodding at empty places above humans' heads or over their shoulders.

He was living in a squalid little flat now, an ex-army doctor invalided home from Afghanistan. The man's entire fabricated history was implanted in his head so deeply sometimes he believed he'd actually lived it. John Hamish Watson had never actually existed, of course, but the man had been somehow slipped into the documents of the world. He was officially in government and military and civil records now as a man who was walking the earth. It was flawless, of course (heaven usually was).

His body now was his own, only humanized—his eyes were a very pale blue now, and he was rather shorter than he would have liked with ordinary features and a limp. That was the worst of all—he wasn't allowed to use his wings, of course; they were hidden away on the ethereal planes and he kept them tucked loosely against his back. He couldn't feel them, though, not with how carefully he was keeping them shielded from both human and demon eyes, and he felt altogether too heavy and too light without their familiar weight. Without them he already felt trapped and slow, and not having proper use of both legs was maddening.

_"You'll have to be careful," _Thaladiel had said. _"The demon is a walking time bomb…anything could set him off. Be patient. Be forgiving. Don't give up."_

_ "Of course I won't."_

Now that he was here, on earth, for all intents and purposes human with a constant, irritating pain in his leg, no human friends, and no communication from Heaven, he was beginning to wonder if he'd had any idea just how difficult it was going to be.

How to set up a meeting with Sherlock Holmes?

And then, two weeks after he'd arrived as a permanent resident on earth, Heaven intervened in the form of a Guardian named Michael, who had taken a short, chubby human form with glasses and a bad suit.

"John! John Watson!"

What followed was a curious conversation that could only have been scripted by Heaven, and John was only grateful he'd been able to stay in character for the sake of the London civility out for an afternoon walk at the park.

"Come on," he said over coffee, "who would want me for a flatmate?"

And it was only with the greatest effort that he disguised a grin when Michael smiled slowly and said,

"Meet me at Bart's Hospital tomorrow, yeah? I've got someone I want to introduce you to."

Later, in the privacy of John's flat and away from prying demon eyes, Michael sat at the table and let his sandy brown wings slowly materialize. A soft wave of released power brushed John's face and hair, and he sighed.

"You'd better be careful, you know. If demons see me talking with an angel they'll wonder."

Michael sighed too and folded them back into the ethereal planes reluctantly. "Don't know how you have the energy to keep them away."

John shrugged. They ached with misuse, and already the energy it took to keep them bound so that not even Hell's Angels could see was exhausting. Keeping himself hidden from human sight as a Guardian was one thing—hiding himself on the ethereal planes from other demons and angels was quite another. "So, Mike Stamford," he said, "how exactly do you know my demon?"

Mike smiled. "I've been a plant here for a few earth months. Getting to know him, getting into his world, getting so he recognizes me, knows me. All to connect you with him. Other than that you're on your own."

"Sounds lonely," John said. "And you've known me long enough that if he researches me through you everything will check out?"

"I've read your file. I know John Watson's life history as well as you do. Well, maybe not quite."

John smiled wryly. His transformation to John Watson had been frightening in its perfection, and he sat back in his chair and stared at a discolored whorl on the table, tracing it lightly with a finger.

"I can't feel Heaven," he said finally, and Mike shifted slightly, looking sympathetic. "I feel completely cut off, Michael. Completely cut off. I had no idea it was going to be like this. I gave Thaladiel my word I'd do it and I will, but it isn't going to be easy."

"No one said it would be," Michael said. "But if any angel is up to the job, you are." He leaned forward, eyes suddenly ice-bright, flashing momentarily with glory in his earnestness. "There isn't anyone else who could do it better. Thaladiel chose you for a reason."

"Come on, there are others who could have done it…"

"Not like you," Michael said firmly. "Not like you, John. I don't know what's different about you but they chose carefully and they chose you. The Council of Archangels itself approved it, you know."

John looked up sharply. "No, I didn't." Instead of comforting him, this only tightened the knot of tension in his stomach that had been growing for two weeks. _Why me?_ He thought, and not for the first time. _What is so special about me? _But Michael looked as if he expected John to be pleased with the news, and so he smiled despite the lump of insecurity lodged painfully in his chest and tried to sound grateful. "Thanks. Good…good to know."

Michael stood then, holding out a hand for John to shake. "I'll be back tomorrow," he said. "Bart's."

"Right," John said, and then watched with something akin to jealousy as Michael's glory broke through in a flash of gold and power and he was gone.

He didn't sleep—he didn't need to, just like he didn't need to eat or drink—but instead he paced around and around his flat, trying to use his cane as little as possible and growling in frustration when his knee finally gave out on him and he ended up sprawled across his bed, breathing heavily with pain shooting up and down his leg.

He closed his eyes tightly, let the cane fall to the floor, and lay there for a long while, missing Heaven.

* * *

**Heaven: **Classes of angels (the generic term for spiritual entities from Heaven) from highest to lowest: Archangel, Seraphim, Guardian, Cherubim, Herald

**Hell: **Classes of demons (the generic term for spiritual entities from Hell) from highest to lowest: Hell's Angel, Devil, Spirit


End file.
